For 20 minutes every day his second semester in college, Dustin Curry would sit down in front of a mirror and stick a nail up his nose. He began with an inch-and-a-half long nail and worked his way to three-and-a-half inches, eventually graduating to four-inch nails, which he carries around in a small wooden box.

Two weeks ago, Curry stuck a four-inch nail up his nose for a few of his friends. Before that, the last time Curry had done it was in April, on stage for an audience as a part of a magic show called Mister Gremor’s Caravan of Curiosities, the same magic show, that he will be performing at the Russellville Arts Center on Jan. 12.

Dustin Curry is a magician, and the nail trick is called The Human Blockhead “because you have to be an absolute blockhead to want to do that,” he joked. And even though Curry might be a self-proclaimed blockhead, he can still shove a nail up his nose at request without killing himself.

“It’s like riding a bike, pretty much,” Curry said of the trick, which is as dangerous as it looks. “I can just do it anytime, really.”

This is just one of several tricks Curry performs in his act, although calling The Human Blockhead a trick might be a mistake in semantics. Shoving a nail in his nose isn’t smoke and mirrors — there are two major sinus cavities in the skull, and Curry shoves the nail into the maxillary sinus cavity which resides behind the nasal passage.

“It’s not a magic trick,” he said. “It’s not a matter of having a fake nail or anything, it’s just knowing your anatomy and how to do it.”

But Curry does more with anatomy than just a nail in a sinus cavity in his show. He’ll also catch his hand in an animal trap and escape from a straitjacket.

With such macabre, and downright sadistic, tricks being performed, the show might sound scary — and that’s exactly what Curry is going for.

“The show is a scary magic show, is the briefest way to say it,” he explained. “There’s a lot of jump-out-at-you scares, but it was influenced mostly by movies like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Paranormal Activity,”’and the foreboding feel they have.”

“When you see a magic show in Branson or Vegas or New York, you see these guys with silk shirts and showgirls and it’s really overdone,” he continued. “But in this show, the idea isn’t to baffle people, it’s to scare them.”

The show pays homage to early 20th-century séances, with elements from gypsy and medicine man shows thrown in as well. It takes place just before World War I, and there’s the same sense of nostalgic yearning that Cowboys had during the Wild West.

“They say that the west is dying,” Curry said. “In this case, it’s the sideshow and gypsy caravans are dying.”

The show revolves around an assortment of ghost stories with magic tricks applied to them. For example, Curry performs a magic trick involving Lizzy Borden, a woman tried and acquitted for the axe murders of her father and stepmother.

“I couldn’t even tell you which came first, the story or the trick,” Curry said in regards to developing the act.

But the show is also couched in historical research, and professors at Curry’s college at Southeastern Oklahoma University were so impressed by the show and the historical background it the Dean of Arts and Sciences gave Curry a research grant.

Curry estimates that the university has invested over $3,000 in the show, allowing Curry to upgrade from smaller, homemade tricks to larger acts with more flair.

The biggest illusion of the show, which Curry wouldn’t reveal, is one Curry built himself and involves a Ouija board.

Jan. 12 won’t be the first time Curry will stand on a stage at Russellville. As a Russellville High School graduate, he performed in several high school productions, including “The Music Man” and “You Can’t Take it With You.” In college, he played Romeo at the Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival, and played Scrooge in Southeastern Oklahoma University’s production of “A Christmas Carol.”

“I was an actor before I was a magician,” he said. “Just after exploring variety performance, I found out that that was more important to me than acting in straight theatre.

“I have so many choices that I have to make in the next couple of years,” he added.

With such a broad range of talents, Curry finds himself influenced by a broad range of performers. He admires Robin Williams’ versatility in comedy, as well as Harry Houdini, Eugene Burger and Nathan Lane.

But, while Curry prefers magic over performing drama, his main goal has always remained the same — to simply entertain people.

“I’m a person who’s very much in love with entertaining people,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s not about the money or the fame, although those do help out. But any person who’s starting out in acting says that they don’t do it for the money. It’s all about getting to meet people and entertain people.”